Comment: Rescue Archaeology the French way By Jean-Paul Demoule

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In the previous issue of Public Archaeology JeanPaul Demoule provided a lucid account of the new arrangements for the financing and execution of 'rescue archaeology' in France, and of the background to their introduction (Demoule, 2002). The new French system is based on an archaeology tax or levy imposed on developers. The amount payable is calculated using formulae concerning the depth, density or complexity of archaeological strata or structures on a development site. The funds thus raised are pooled and given to the Institut National de Recherches Archeologiques.Preventives (INRAP). INRAP is a public body (Etablissement Public), administratively autonomous but dependent on the state. INRAP is a public rescue archaeology service, with authority over all rescue excavation anywhere on French territory. However, decisions about what should be excavated (and, presumably, about how much to spend on any given excavation) are taken, not by INRAP, but by the regional archaeological services as the representatives of the Ministry of Culture in each region. Thus, rescue archaeology in France is now centrally funded and carried out by a public monopoly. In this (as Demoule recognises) France now differs from a number of other European countries. The contrast with England, 1 with its fully commercial regime, is particularly sharp. Other countries have a system that is intermediate between the 'commercial' and 'monopoly public service' models. Although Demoule clearly prefers the 'public service' model for rescue archaeology, he stops short of making specific criticisms of the English system. By the same token, the new French system has only just been introduced. It will inevitably be sometime before it is possible to judge how well it is working. However, comment is merited on some aspects of the contrasts between the two very different systems which now exist in England and in France. The discussion may be of particular interest to British readers, because the idea of a 'developer levy' for archaeology has been raised here from time to time (but never, as far as I know, seriously considered within government).